A couple of weeks ago I sent out a simple tweet about how I had stopped using phrase match in my PPC campaigns. Which is strange, because my campaigns were almost exclusively built on ranks of phrase match keywords covering a multitude of search queries relevant to my clients' products or services. A few people asked me why... the reason is the launch of broad match modified keywords.

I hated broad match - it just seemed like leaving your car parked with the door open, the engine running and the keys in the ignition. Hey, Google - over here! Come spend whatever you like! And, oftentimes, advertisers were surprised by just how quickly a budget could be depleted. Ta-Daaaaa! No you see me now you don't!

I can just about remember my first Adwords campaign. It was for my own business and I was spending my own money.

In my opinion, this is the best way to learn the platform - there is no better motivation to learn the subtleties (and not so subtle pitfalls) than knowing that every wasted click is money straight out of your own pocket.

In fact, for everyone wondering how best to learn AdWords, I would always suggest they look to get some skin in the game.

Looking back, I now realise how green I was and how much money I probably wasted, but that is not the theme of today's article.

Instead, today, I am considering the way in which the KPI's change over time as your Adwords knowledge develops.

I've been quite happy over the past few months. I discovered that I could get most of the traffic I wanted with a minimal amount of fuss using Google's new Broad Match Modified (BMM) match type. I felt like Baby Bear from Goldilocks - BMM isn't too loose, nor is it too restrictive. It's just right!

And like a happy bear, I was gradually replacing most of my phrase match keywords with their BMM counterparts.

I had never really used broad match - that was like putting all my money on the desk and telling Google to just take what it wanted. So I ended up with basically two types of campaign. Those using BMM and those using exact match. I like exact match... not quite as much as I like BMM - but for different reasons - It's badass.